Welcome to Part 3 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post fresh content regularly to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In this section of the series, we discuss the configuration phase of this process. You will learn what makes an expertly configured site different than a professionally configured website, and what type of work is required to make sure that when all is set up and fully configured, web traffic will automatically start flowing simply by posting fresh content on your site.
WordPress Traffic System – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by business owners as the greatest challenge they face online. With business getting increasingly more competitive, it’s worth learning about any advantage available to improve your results and performance online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can provide you with a huge advantage over other competitors. An expertly configured website gives your business a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Stage Is The Difference
There is a significant difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a site that has been professionally installed and set up by an expert website builder but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here’s one way to understand the key difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence with an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured site gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing tool!)
Not only are more steps needed to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, but also a special type of expertise.
Allow me to illustrate this point with a story.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
All is going just fine in the gizmo assembly workshop when all of a sudden, everything ceases working.
No one can figure out what’s happened and so the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Shortly after arriving, the expert heads out directly to the main control box. After staring at the board for less than 3 minutes or so, the expert then takes out a tiny little hammer and makes a very gentle tap about 1 cm from the left corner of the unit.
Immediately, everything springs to life again.
The manager is delighted as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the factory manager receives an invoice for the sum of $5,000.
Puzzled and confused, the factory manager dials the expert. Why had they had been charged so much for less than 5 minutes work? He promptly requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrives and is placed in the manager’s in-tray. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive traffic to their sites.
How much money did the gizmo factory stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the business was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to demand fair compensation for years spent developing the knowledge and expertise that allowed him to quickly assess and fix a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WordPress website set up so all you ever had to do is publish content to it and search engines, social sites like Facebook and Twitter and dozens of other web properties would be instantly notified, how much time and money would you save?
(How much time and money would you save if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
While the solution to many challenges often seems ridiculously simple once it’s been implemented, it rarely is that simple or easy when you are trying to work things out.
Knowing how to expertly configure a WordPress site requires more than just installing a website and configuring a few basic settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs need to be installed to get desired functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party accounts need to be set up to achieve certain outcomes
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that things will function as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
Although this part of the traffic automation system may not seem so technically challenging, it can be quite involved. This is because it’s not just about installing and configuring a piece of software, clicking on a button or two … it’s all this and so much more.
The configuration stage is a process that involves your web hosting server, your WP site, and various third-party sites …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring some settings in WordPress)
If we try to flowchart the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the configuration process)
Let’s take a look at what’s involved in more detail.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for website installation purposes (this should have been done during the Setup phase). We’re talking about fine-tuning settings and options in your web server specifically for handling all web traffic …
(During the configuration phase, your web hosting account settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is positive traffic. Some of the web traffic your business will attract will be unwelcome traffic like spam, malicious threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, is about evaluating your needs, planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This can include looking at things like integrating spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, etc …
(Have you configured your webhosting settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
Once your web server settings have been checked and configured, the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites.
Integration With External Web Properties
The purpose of choosing external sites is that all of your content should be published from a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will automatically be syndicated to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once you incorporate these external services into your configuration, content linked back to your website gets automatically posted to search, social and aggregator sites. Your business will receive added exposure online, helping your business tap into new sources of traffic.
Some of these web properties and online platforms will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site to help speed up the process and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your WordPress site:
Google Webmasters
(Google Search Console)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides you with a range of essential data, SEO tools and reports about your website.
After setting up your Google Webmasters account and entering site data, the information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO – see further below) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing campaigns, sales conversions, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, search engine and social media referrers, etc.
Once your Google Analytics account and site data have been set up, traffic monitoring information can be integrated with WordPress using a Google Analytics plugin and automatically sent to other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account with Bing Webmaster Tools are set up, this information can be used to automate traffic settings and notifications in WordPress using plugins like Yoast SEO (see further below) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress provides users with a hosted and a self-hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress option if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part Four of this series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social accounts set up in order to configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all of the popular social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are many social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just choose those that will work with your setup and/or content syndication tools (we discuss some of these tools in greater detail further below and in the Automation phase).
(There are lots of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Sites, Aggregators, Etc.
There are many online technology platforms and RSS aggregators that can act as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some are more suitable for enterprise-level applications.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that allows you to add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content displays in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your account.
There are various solutions you can incorporate into your own web traffic blueprint. Please contact us if you would like to explore your options and discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with external sites, it’s time to configure your site.
WordPress – Configuring Your Site
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some of the important points.
WordPress Settings
The WordPress admin area contains a Settings menu that allows you to set up your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings menu)
General Settings
Fields like Site Title and Tagline affect traffic by influencing your site’s SEO, search results, etc …
(Settings Menu – General Settings Screen)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(Global Settings – Writing Settings Area)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically configured your site settings to discourage search engines from indexing your site – see next section, then your site will automatically notify the list of services entered into the Update Services box
With an ‘out of the box’ WordPress installation, this section displays only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of all the update services you want to notify as soon as you publish a new post to this section and WordPress will do the rest …
(WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence web traffic. For example, choosing to display the full text vs a summary of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and RSS email campaigns, and could play a part in someone’s decision to explore your site further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to get the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting here as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is ticked or not.
Generally, you want to encourage search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked enables your site to ping your update services list whenever a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search indexing spiders from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Settings Menu – Reading Settings Section)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to blogs linked to from your articles, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Settings Menu – Discussion Settings Section)
Permalinks
Your Permalink settings allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings)
The examples below show some of the ways your permalinks can be configured …
(Configuring search-friendly URLS)
To learn more about setting up WP permalinks, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Change Your WordPress Permalinks
Plugin Settings
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that can add just about every type of functionality imaginable to your site, including many plugins that improve traffic generation.
Let’s take a brief look at examples of plugin categories and plugins that can help drive more traffic to your site
Blog Defender Security Plugin
Once again, it’s important to configure your site for dealing with the effects of both good traffic and bad traffic. No blog is safe from being targeted.
(WordPress Security Plugins help prevent bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress site invisible to botnets and hackers.
Go here for more information:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive more traffic by improving the search engine friendliness of your website)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO (previously known as WordPress SEO by Yoast) to improve your site’s SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your website easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media pages, e.g. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content with others online can help drive more traffic to your site, especially if you publish great content that adds real value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing to their site using free or inexpensive plugins)
There are loads of free or inexpensive social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to select which sites visitors can share your content to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of likes), etc. Some plugins even allow you to set up protected content areas on your site which users can unlock by liking your page.
Configuring WordPress Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your website, some themes also provide built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many WP themes like Graphene (a free theme) come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With a number of themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your pages is as easy as clicking a button …
(Many WordPress themes come with built-in social sharing features)
Other Configuration Steps For WordPress Traffic
Last (but by no means least) in the web traffic configuration process, are the components that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Compliance Pages
Once again, when preparing your website for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and bad traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong when more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Legally Compliant?)
We have created a detailed article on adding legal pages to WordPress here:
Post Tags And Categories
Post categories and tags help to improve your site’s search engine optimization, which helps you get more traffic.
(Categories help improve traffic by allowing search engines to better classify and index your pages.)
As we strongly recommend in this article, it’s best to review and set up your site’s categories and tags during the Website Planning Process.
When considering ways to automate and improve web traffic, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
Add A WordPress Site Map
A visitor site map that lists all of your posts and pages is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your online content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for web traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are two different things. Only search engine bots can interpret XML sitemaps. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
Configure Your Site’s 404 Error Page
When visitors searching online for your site enter the wrong web address into their browser or click on an invalid hyperlink, they will typically be presented with a 404 error page …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to recover traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 Error Page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up in your web server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page from your WordPress admin.
WordPress Traffic Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to begin attracting new traffic is add new content on a regular basis.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate and requires the configuration and integration of different elements and external web properties …
(Traffic System – Configuration Checklist)
The skills and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site typically takes many website professionals months to learn.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 3
To continue reading, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of tutorials aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business online cost-effectively and drive traffic automatically using a WordPress website and proven web marketing methods.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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